City in Sight: Dutch Dealings with Urban Change

Abstract

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the written permission of both the copyright owners and the authors of the book. Our appreciation goes to all the contributors to this volume, not only for their research efforts and their commitment to this project, but also for their professional attitude in dealing with editorial guidelines and comments. We are especially grateful to John Mollenkopf, who was willing to write a thoughtful commentary chapter to this volume that, moreover, had to be written in a short time span -between the completion of the various chapters and the start of the production process of this book. John Mollenkopf is not only an internationally acknowledged expert on urban issues, he is also very much acquainted -both as a scholar and a regular visitor -with the Dutch urban context.During the preparation of this book, we were able to count on the valuable support of a number of people at Nicis Institute. Ylva Hendriks, program officer of STIP, has provided valuable assistance in preparing the index and guarding the production process during the summertime. We are also grateful to Dick Meuldijk, who was able to reconcile the editors' wishes with his expert knowledge in producing the map to the introduction of this book, and to Koos van Dijken for providing some statistical information. Finally, we owe a special debt to a number of persons affiliated with Amsterdam University Press. Comments made by its editorial board, in addition to three referees, have definitely improved the book and its chapters. Erik van Aert and Jaap Wagenaar of Amsterdam University Press cannot be thanked enough for supporting this project and for guiding the manuscript through the publication process so patiently and efficiently. This book presents the results of the most recent research on urban topics in the Netherlands. Why would those results be of interest for a wider and also non-Dutch audience? We think for several reasons.In the first place, the Netherlands' struggle with many urban problems might be instructive for the urban problems other countries face as well (or will have to confront in the near future). Huge transformations that have manifested themselves in the Netherlands affect many more countries. The Dutch economy has become one of the most open (and in times of economic crisis: most vulnerable) and service-oriented of the world. Moreover, the Dutch population has changed dramatically: with one million Muslims and about one million other migrants (out of sixteen million inhabitants), the Netherlands has de facto become an immigration society, like many other West-European countries experiencing similar changes in the past decades. Compared to the old settler societies (the US, Canada, and Australia), the new immigrant countries struggle with problems they had n...